Presidential hopefuls make MySpace pages

From eSchool News staff and wire service reports

March 21st, 2007

Prospective voters eager to learn more about John McCain or to become an internet “friend” of Barack Obama now have a new online opportunity: MySpace.com, the popular social-networking web site, on March 18 launched a section dedicated to the 2008 presidential election.

Called the Impact Channel, it’s the latest attempt by an internet company to educate voters by serving as an information hub for political candidates and the public.

By clicking on http://impact.myspace.com, the site’s mostly young users can link to the personal pages, or “profiles,” of at least 11 presidential hopefuls as of press time.

MySpace users will be able to read the candidates’ blogs, see photos and video, and, if they choose, link their favorite candidate to their “friends” list or put a candidate’s ad onto their own pages.

“As the country’s most trafficked web site, MySpace will play a powerful role in the upcoming election,” Chris DeWolfe, MySpace’s chief executive, said in a statement. (According to Alexa.com, the web-site ranking service, MySpace is the fifth most visited web site, after Yahoo, MSN, Google, and YouTube).

Some candidates, taking advantage of the internet’s potential to reach millions of voters, have already set up their own campaign web sites and profiles on other social-networking web sites, including Facebook and Friendster.

And earlier this month, the online video site YouTube launched a new section that allows candidates to feature their own video “channels” at no cost.

So far, some candidates’ MySpace profiles appear more personal than others, and some were designed to appeal specifically to young people.

Kucinich’s profile shows a picture of him with his wife and young children, along with audio instructions on how to pronounce his name.

Visitors to Romney’s page can click and play Elvis Presley’s “A Little Less Conversation.” McCain tells MySpace users his favorite TV show is “24” and his favorite movie is “Viva Zapata.”

Obama’s profile boasted more than 67,000 friends as of press time. It lists his status as “married,” his occupation (“senator”), his ethnicity (“other”), and his zodiac sign (“Leo”).